relatives of grigori, Pointsman, Slothrop

[alice wellintown]

When he stepped out of the hospital door the grounds overwhelmed him:
the cropped shrubbery, the edged lawns, the undeviating walks.
Shadrack looked at the cement stretches: each one leading
clearheadedly to some presumably desirable destination. There were no
fences, no warnings, no obstacles at all between concrete and green
grass, so one could easily ignore the tidy sweep of stone and cut out
in another direction-a direction of one's own.

    Shadrack stood at the foot of the hospital steps watching the
heads of trees tossing ruefully but harmlessly, since their trunks
were rooted too deeply in the earth to threaten him. Only the walks
made him uneasy. He shifted his weight, wondering how he could get to
the gate without stepping on the concrete. While plotting his
course-where he would have to leap, where to skirt a clump of bushes-a
loud guffaw startled him. Two men were going up the steps. Then he
noticed that there were many people about, and that he was just now
seeing them, or else they had just materialized. They were thin slips,
like paper dolls floating down the walks. Some were seated in chairs
with wheels, propelled by other paper figures from behind. All seemed
to be smoking, and their arms and legs curved in the breeze. A good
high wind would pull them up and away and they would land perhaps
among the tops of the trees.

    Shadrack took the plunge. Four steps and he was on the grass
heading for the gate. He kept his head down to avoid seeing the paper
people swerving and bending here and there, and he lost his way. When
he looked up, he was standing by a low red building separated from the
main building by a covered walkway. From somewhere came a sweetish
smell which reminded him of something painful. He looked around for
the gate and saw that he had gone directly away from it in his
complicated journey over the grass. Just to the left of the low
building was a graveled driveway that appeared to lead outside the
grounds. He trotted quickly to it and left, at last, a haven of more
than a year, only eight days of which he fully recollected.

    Once on the road, he headed west.


http://nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/5/morrison/sula.htm


On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 1:00 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> For whatever reason, or lack of it, I've alway connected Slothrop with
> Invisible Man. There are the paint factory scenes in both novels,
> where organized & slave labor is a theme,  and where Whiteness is the
> 80,000 pound whale in the room. But the apparent madness of these men,
> like the "madness" of Cheif Bromden, and how they are subjected to
> trials that, as they are made known to the protagonist, make them
> neither tragic nor comic figures, but myhtological figures. To these
> we would add Shadrack of Morrison's Sula (1973); he too is a vicitm of
> war (like Bromden and Slothrop he a Veteran of World War) and like
> Bromden, at least. a voctim of genocide. His national suicide day is
> also a fprm of passive resistance. His name, alluded to by MLK in his
> famous letter from jail in Birmingham, is biblical. Morrison's use of
> names, Pilot is a fine example from Song of Solomon,  are worth
> investigating as well.
>
> Pulpa Gallega...and Paella Valencia with Lobster today; hope I don't
> get that nasty rash again.
>
> I'm quite pround to have been blacklisted from everyhing...even the
> anarchists rejected me.
>
> Good luck finding a job, Dave. Maybe if you posted a resume here we
> could help you out. Or send it to us offlist or whatever...
>
> T&A